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Materialise has announced its acquisition of ACTech, a German company producing limited runs of highly complex metal parts.

The agreement of this deal, Materialise hopes, will enhance its ability to offer complete manufacturing solutions for unique components additively manufactured in metal. It brings together the knowledge and experience Materialise has in metals, additive manufacturing and software, with the comprehensive metal manufacturing offering of ACTech.

ACTech boasts two decades’ worth of knowledge and experience in the production, treatment and quality control of complex metal parts. By taking control of this expertise, as well as ACTech’s in-house infrastructure, Materialise will further improve its existing metal competence centre and reinforce its authority in the metal 3D printing market. This will include harnessing ACTech to make improvements to its software offerings in the metal AM space.

“ACTech knows metal and how to shape it to production standard, and we know metal 3D printing,” said Materialise founder and CEO, Wilfried Vancraen. “Bringing those two competencies together is vital to the delivery of high added-value metal 3D printed parts for specialised applications.”

While the acquisition hands all direction to Materialise, ACTech’s current customers will still be looked after. Materialise will see that they gain immediate access to metal 3D printed parts for pre-production design iterations, just as they did before, but will now also benefit from Materialise’s expertise as well as ACTech’s. It will mean an improved service offering for markets where complexity and speed are the driving factors, and the companies hope greater reason to adopt metal additive manufacturing.

“Through the acquisition, we are further enhancing the manufacturing and software backbone position that will support the entire industry,” the TCT Hall of Famer added. “For over 27 years, we have always been there as a leading, comprehensive provider of solutions in industrial polymers printing. That position has enabled us to both develop and serve a growing demand for certified manufacturing with dedicated software and solutions. By joining forces with ACTech, we will accelerate that same strategy for metal manufacturing.”

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